I seem always to be telling the story of how, in 1996, I was lured into football writing by a rather fiendish sports editor at the Times. 'But I know nothing of football, sir!' I simpered in falsetto, arching my neck and fluttering a fan in front of my face; 'I am a lady, surely you can see that?' But they sent me to Wembley to see England v Switzerland, and it was rather exciting and interesting and oddly real, and then I kept going for four years, and my testosterone levels shot right up, and my voice got deeper, and I got incredibly opinionated and was always freezing - but in all conscience, good grief, I just can't repeat that story all over again.

Suffice to say, anyway, that it left me with some rather unfeminine vestigial reflexes - the most embarrassing of which is that I can't hear the name Alan Shearer without spitting on the floor. This can be a burden in polite society - especially among those who don't know that football support is as much about seething with irrational hatred for certain individual players as it is about blindly adoring them. When I first started attending England matches, it confused me to find that portions of the crowd actually booed substitutions, and that you weren't allowed to say, 'Good old Platt!' under any circumstances. It took me about two short weeks to absorb this tendency, however.

And now I just hate Alan Shearer - even though he has (obviously) never done anything to me. While others have recently celebrated the Newcastle captain's breaking of Jackie Milburn's club goal-scoring record, or noted with neutral interest a new book entitled Alan Shearer: Captain Fantastic, I have narrowed my eyes, noisily evacuated some phlegm, and then said: 'What? He's still getting away with it?'

Annoyingly, I have to admit that I started out admiring Shearer very much. In fact, in the second week of Euro 96 I informed my readers that I'd had a dream about him working in a furniture shop - which thankfully I didn't pause to analyse. Foolhardily, I added a week later: 'A month ago I had never heard of Alan Shearer. Now I want to have his babies.' I was so keen to accumulate detail that I even read that infamously dull book, Diary of a Season, in which Shearer celebrates Blackburn's league victory in 1995 by creosoting a fence.

But then I started to scrutinise the teamwork aspect of England games and I began to dislike nearly everything about the way he played. He would wait to be served perfect passes (with his hand raised) and sulk when they didn't come. He would foul defenders (with his elbow) and mysteriously get away with it. He would walk upfield (with his arm up) when everyone else was running. And as the team acquired younger, more dynamic players who kept their arms down, he started to seem like a big, waddling, sullen, dirty, immovable and permanently pointing obstacle to beautiful football.

Team strategy was apparently built round him, and this made me mad. True, at the World Cup in France, he got fitter and faster again, but it was his needless foul on the Argentinian goalkeeper (or so I said, thumping the table) that really lost us that fateful match at Saint-Etienne, after Sol Campbell's goal was disallowed as a consequence.

Here are the regular questions I would ask, out loud, in exasperation, at England matches during this period: How does he get away with it? Why is he walking? Why doesn't anyone notice that he raised his arm to appeal for that penalty before he artfully tripped over the keeper? Why doesn't he run? Why is he never rested? Why is he never substituted? Would you call that strolling or ambling? Why is he never sent off? Why is he never even booked? Who died and made him God? At a football writers' dinner one year I was lucky enough to sit next to Ted Beckham, and what did I do? Instead of angling for anecdotes of the infant David, I moaned on and on and on about Alan Bloody Shearer.

Now, many people (especially in the north-east) applaud Shearer for other qualities; I know that. According to a recent Swedish dissertation on his place in Newcastle legend, he is a true 'hero' in that he possesses 'a consistent capacity for action that surpasses the norm of man'. Even I can see that he is physically brave, unbelievably tough and fiercely committed. At a time when English football is a showcase for international mercenaries, Shearer is a home-grown, bullet-headed, hairy-kneed yeoman - and he knows where the goal is, which helps.

I think it wasn't Shearer himself that I hated most: it was the official blindness shown towards his limitations that exasperated me. His talismanic status made him exempt from question, and I couldn't accept that. Nowadays (except in the north-east), it seems there is generally more criticism of a) his 'manly' style of football, b) his inexplicable untouchability where refs are concerned, and c) his ability to intimidate managers, so that if they leave him off the team sheet, they get instant delivery of a P45. But it's a bit late now to help me with my spitting problem. Why would I still feel this strongly? It just goes to show what football does to you, once you let it inside your brain.

· Lynne Truss's latest book, Talk to the Hand, is published by Profile